Fantasy writers Steven Boyett and Bruce McAllister will read from their contributions to the new Peter Beagle-edited
The Urban Fantasy Anthology at
this weekend's free SF in SF reading series, at San Francisco's Variety Preview Room Theatre (The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor, 582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery), kicking off at 6PM. No charge, but the organizers do ask for donations for the Variety Children's Charity of Northern California.
— Cory
By Xeni Jardin at 12:04 pm Monday, Apr 9
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These people in San Francisco probably had more fun than you on Passover/Easter weekend. BB reader Bhautik Joshi shares his photographs from "Bring Your Own Big Wheel 2012" in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, and explains the idea behind it—
For the uninitiated, the gag is really simple:
- large group of adults in costumes assemble with a variety of wheeled, childrens toys (Group A)
- large group of spectators gather (Group B)
- Group A races down windy Vermont St as fast as they can, leaving a trail of noise and awesomeness in their path
- Group B cheer like maniacs
What's the story behind
this fellow's costume, I wonder? Perhaps one of you can fill us in, in the comments. View
the full photo set here. Here's
Joshi's website.
By Cory Doctorow at 9:28 pm Thursday, Mar 29
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Rina writes, "Join SF in SF and PM Press for an evening with ON THE GROUND: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. with Trina Robbins, Billy X. Jennings, Judy Gumbo Albert and Terry Bisson. Join contributors to the original underground press movement in discussion, reading, and what's bound to be interesting debate!"
As with all SF in SF events, it's free: Mar 31, 6PM, 582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery, San Francisco, CA 94104.
Bonus Reading This Saturday – Sixties Underground Press
By Cory Doctorow at 12:20 pm Saturday, Mar 17
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Newly released documents shed light on the San Francisco edition of the CIA's notorious MK-ULTRA program (through which people were unwittingly given massive doses of LSD to see if the drug would be useful for brainwashing), which ran from 1953-1964. There's lots of detail about MK-ULTRA's work in NYC and Montreal, but the San Francisco operation has been shrouded in mystery. The newly declassified documents form the springboard for a good investigative piece in SF Weekly, in which Troy Hooper speaks to Wayne Ritchie, one of the survivors of MK-ULTRA's San Francisco operation.
There were at least three CIA safe houses in the Bay Area where experiments went on. Chief among them was 225 Chestnut on Telegraph Hill, which operated from 1955 to 1965. The L-shaped apartment boasted sweeping waterfront views, and was just a short trip up the hill from North Beach's rowdy saloons. Inside, prostitutes paid by the government to lure clients to the apartment served up acid-laced cocktails to unsuspecting johns, while martini-swilling secret agents observed their every move from behind a two-way mirror. Recording devices were installed, some disguised as electrical outlets.
To get the guys in the mood, the walls were adorned with photographs of tortured women in bondage and provocative posters from French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The agents grew fascinated with the kinky sex games that played out between the johns and the hookers. The two-way mirror in the bedroom gave the agents a close-up view of all the action.
The main man behind the mirror was burly, balding crime-buster George H. White, a Bureau of Narcotics maverick who made headlines breaking up opium and heroin rings in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the U.S. Few knew he doubled as a CIA spook for Uncle Sam. He oversaw the San Francisco program, gleefully dubbing it Operation Midnight Climax.
"[White] was a real hard head," said Ritchie, who regularly ran into him in courtrooms and law enforcement offices in downtown San Francisco. "All of his agents were pretty much afraid to do anything without his full approval. White would turn on them, physically. He was a big tough guy."
American chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the brains behind White's brawn. It was the height of McCarthyism in the early '50s, and government intelligence leaders, claiming fear of communist regimes, were using hallucinogens to induce confessions from prisoners of war held in Korea, and brainwash spies into changing allegiances. What better way to examine the effects of LSD than to dose unsuspecting citizens in New York City and San Francisco?
Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD
(Thanks, tyrsalvia!)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:46 am Wednesday, Feb 15
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Here's a long-lost 1937 report on police corruption in San Francisco:
In 1935, the citizens of the city of San Francisco were indignant when tales of police officers having amassed huge fortunes through payoffs, graft and bribery came to light. In a convulsion of civic anger, District Attorney Matt Brady and Mayor Angelo Rossi were pressed to act, and they hired private investigator and former G-man Edwin N. Atherton. The so-called Atherton Report prompted dozens of cops to quit or lose their jobs, some went underground, one killed himself and his family. The entire police commission was forced to resign and reports of police payoffs, staged raids on gambling houses and brothels, bail bond skimming, unpaid loans to public officials and other were laid at the door of the House of McDonough.
Lost for more than seventy years, here is the infamous Atherton Report.
The 1937 San Francisco Police Graft Report by Edwin Atherton
(Thanks, hankchapot!)
Rina from San Francisco's SF in SF reading series sez, "Join SF in SF for
a very special evening with steampunk innovators K. W. Jeter, Jay Lake, and Rudy Rucker on Saturday, February 11th. Each author will read a selection, followed by Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson; booksigning and schmoozing follows. Books for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books." (The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor, cash bar and doors open at 6PM, San Francisco). (
Thanks, Rina!)
— Cory
By Dean Putney at 11:31 am Saturday, Feb 4
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This afternoon some friends and I will be playing this new game we really like in Yerba Buena Gardens, and you're welcome to join us.
Johann Sebastian Joust is basically like high-tech tag. Each person has a Playstation Move controller, and the object of the game is to jostle other people's controllers so that you're the last man standing. The twist is that as you play, a Bach concerto will also be playing and its tempo indicates the upper threshold for how much your controller can be jostled before you're out.
If you want to play, we'll be in Yerba Buena Gardens today at 5PM. You don't need to bring anything, we have a full set of controllers, and we'll trade off. See you there!
By Cory Doctorow at 11:03 am Saturday, Feb 4
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The NYT's Scott James recounts the insane red-tape endured by Juliet Pries, an entrepreneur who decided to open an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco's Cole Valley. She had to pay rent on an empty storefront for over two years while the necessary permits were processed, and tens of thousands of dollars in fees (including the cost of producing a detailed map of nearby businesses, which the city itself seemed not to have). If the story sounds familiar, it's because it was the subject of a notorious Xtranormal-produced Hello City Planner video that used it as an example to lampoon the planning bureaucracy in San Francisco.
Pries's restaurant, the Ice Cream Bar, is a popular hit, and employs 14 people, but “Many times it almost didn’t happen," as she says, due to the incredibly administrative hurdles she faced in opening it.
Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.
The ice cream shop’s travails are at odds with the frequent promises made by the mayor and many supervisors that small businesses and job creation are top priorities.
The matter has also alarmed some business leaders, who point out that few small ventures could survive such long delays.
“Someone of lesser fortitude would have left three months into it,” Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, said of Ms. Pries. “Through these hard times we’ve heard all the rhetoric about streamlining the process, about one-stop shopping. It hasn’t happened.”
The link comes by way of JWZ, owner of the DNA Lounge and the adjacent pizzeria, who notes that, "I started the process of trying to cut a door in the wall between my restaurant and nightclub in February 2011. It is now February 2012, and we still don't have the necessary permits and have not yet begun construction. If we have a door in that wall -- and are allowed to let people walk through it -- before 2013, we will consider ourselves lucky."
Before Ice Cream Shop Can Open, City’s Slow Churn
By Cory Doctorow at 7:06 pm Tuesday, Jan 31
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Shan sez, "Our guide/map of SF is printed on a single sheet of A3 Tyvek, and is then folded up according to a technique originally developed at Tokyo University for satellite solar panels. The bistable nature of the fold means that it can be fully opened or closed in one smooth motion, and that there is no way to fold it 'wrong.'
The places we included are a mix of overlooked gems, classic restaurants, and other things like hidden parks, games played across the city, and interesting shops and markets.
We just launched our project on Kickstarter yesterday evening, and as of today we're almost 10% funded!"
TOC Guide to SF
(Thanks, Shan!)
The
San Francisco Chronicle loves the stage adaptation of my novel
Little Brother, and brings the welcome news that its run has been
extended by two weeks!
— Cory
The
next installment of San Francisco's SF in SF reading series, on Jan 28, features Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife) and Ayize Jama-Everett (The Liminal People). Organizer Rina Wiseman writes, "it's Debut Novel Drink Night! Join us for an SF in SF Sling...we can't tell you what's in it til you get here!" Free admission (suggested $5-$10 donation). Doors open 6PM. 582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery.
— Cory
By Cory Doctorow at 9:53 am Tuesday, Jan 17
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There's a new stage adaptation of my novel Little Brother opening in San Francisco. Charlie Jane Anders from IO9 got to go to the preview and loved it, which is incredibly heartening, since I won't get to see it!
So I'll just say that the version I saw was powerful and brilliant, and the cast was note-perfect, especially Daniel Petzold as Marcus Yallow. (The other two castmembers, Marissa Keltie and Cory Censoprano, have a harder task in some ways, since they play a variety of roles throughout the show. And they're both great as well.) The stage play uses a lot of pre-recorded video and some very clever sets to create a lot of different settings, as well as giving a primer in topics like the futility of using data-mining to catch terrorists.
Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother becomes a must-see stage play
By Cory Doctorow at 11:51 am Sunday, Dec 25
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Rick Prelinger sez, "Here's a little holiday gift from Prelinger Archives. It's the work of accomplished amateur filmmaker (and expert tinkerer) Tullio Pellegrini, who combined a 16mm Bell & Howell Cinemascope lens with the wonders of Kodachrome and made this homage to the city of San Francisco. You'll see Playland, our oceanside amusement park which was closed in 1972, very rare footage of the SkyTram (an extinct ride over Seal Rocks and Sutro Baths), and a brakescreeching ride down the Crookedest Street in the World. Happy Holidays!"
San Francisco 1955 in Cinemascope, captured by amateur filmmaker
By Cory Doctorow at 10:20 am Friday, Dec 23
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Keyan sez, "FOGcon is a new literary-themed SF/F con in the tradition of Wiscon and Readercon, but based in San Francisco Bay Area. It was held for the first time in 2011. This year (2012) it'll be from March 30-April 1, 2012, at the Walnut Creek Marriott. The theme is 'The Body', with two wonderful Honored Guests, writer Nalo Hopkinson and writer and artist Shelley Jackson. It's a great con with a warm and friendly ambiance, a manageable size, and intelligent programming. And it's less than an hour from down-town San Francisco."
FOGcon
By Cory Doctorow at 6:22 am Wednesday, Dec 7
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FirstSecond has just re-released Derek Kirk Kim's
Same Difference, his Ignatz, Harvey and Eisner award-winning indie comic from his early career. The FirstSecond edition is absolutely gorgeous, with a transparent plastic dustjacket printed with bug-eyed goldfish that swim through the cover-art.
Same Difference is the story of Korean-American 20-something slackers in San Francisco who wrestle with the stereotypes and ambitions that they feel guide their lives. It has the feel of vintage Douglas Coupland, a drifting ennui shot through with moments of human warmth and connection. And though it's a quick read, it leaves a lasting emotional coal smouldering in its wake.
Same Difference
Read the rest
